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Problems with Education - Lack of Context
It's no secret that I have and have had many problems with schools, schooling, and our American education system. People have asked me what I'd do to fix it. And I suppose I should explain where I come from. I'm not a teacher, not a politician, no longer a student, nor am I the parent of a student. I am simply one of the people burned and burned hard by the American education system. Do my words mean anything? That's up to you, and I'll be honest, some of my ideas sound crazy and I'm not one to judge plausibility. All I have is experience, logic, and my knowledge on the subject. There are many places that I could start: eviscerating Common Core, the assembly line method of teaching, standardized testing, education becoming a worldwide religion, and most of all, college. But I thought I wanted to start with "context." What is 5+14? The answer is 19. Now tell me why we care about this problem? We don't. There is none. It's a random math problem that I made up, and literally any equation I could pull out of my head is like that. Every teacher and every parent has heard this question from their child: "Why are we learning this?" Answer the question. Every single time. And "it's on the curriculum" does not count. Answer the question relating to the real-world. Even better, their real-world. The "curriculum" means absolutely nothing to any student below high school. It's not that hard, either? Why are we studying World War II? Because if we can learn how previous wars and dictators came into power, we can recognize the signs and prevent it from happening again and learn from the aftermath of World War I's mistakes of trying to never have a war ever again. And that's just one of the reasons you can come up with for World War II. But what if you can't come up with an answer? Why are we learning about Latin? If you can't come up with an answer, in the student's eyes, their question is now a point. And don't bullshit either. "We're learning Latin because it makes it easier to learn the other romantic languages." No it doesn't. Spending more time learning the other romantic languages makes it easier to learn the other romantic languages. There is no reason to learn Latin unless you're becoming a doctor or a lawyer, and as much as their parents would wish otherwise, very few people become doctors or lawyers. Why am I suggesting this? Well, recently we've come up with the theory of the attention economy. In a world where media is becoming more and more engaging people are ignoring the things that aren't as interesting. You pay more attention to that YouTube video than the advertisement that came before. You pay more attention to your video game than you did in class. Educators need to see themselves competing in the attention economy. They no longer have a monopoly on it. And just demanding that you should get the biggest cut the commodity because you deserve it or you're better than the other people demanding a child's attention will get you to lose. Don't say you're better, be better. How do you do this? Engage your students. You can't do this if you're doing nothing but talking about your students and giving them random marks on a paper that their parents are going to yell at them for. Giving a child a grade is not engaging them. Giving a child a test is not engaging them. Both of them are important to the current model of education, I'm not prepared to argue that. But if you've engaged a student properly, chances are they won't have to study for those tests and grades because they retained it the first time. Also, note-taking is not engaging. It's easy, as long as you're willing to be creative and do more work. The biggest problem with education is that educators are often trying to find the easiest way to do something, like using standardized tests. When teaching or even taking care of children in general, you almost never want to take the easiest option. It will bite you in the ass. For example, it's easy to give your child all of the candy and McDonalds they want. It's very hard to take care of childhood Diabetes, and bullying scars due to the child's obesity. If you give context to these things you're teaching kids, it will make things easier later on. Why? They won't be asking "why are we learning this" because they'll already know and they'll know from the beginning. I mean, some classes have done the first steps to something like this. A good science teacher will demonstrate science experiments and maybe even explain something like ferro fluid. And math classes try, but don't really succeed in doing this with word problems. If Jeffery has six candies and steals seven candies from Gary... It's not engaging because no one gives a shit who Jerry or Gary are. Speaking of which, yeah, English teachers may have this the most difficult, but it's still possible. But, I'll put my money where my mouth is. I want to teach a second grade class subtraction. I guess, maybe somewhere between basic and slightly advanced. How can I make 1756 - 568 sound engaging in the slightest? Bring in shopping catalogs. I'm not kidding. Start with any number, usually a round one like ten-thousand, and allow kids to pick things out of the book. In fact, if you want to be even more practical here, you teach them to round up the 99 cents. Just keep in mind, at some point someone is going to ask you why everyone sets prices at x.99. I expect you to answer that question, or better yet, ask them what they think the answer is. What if you don't know the answer? Dude, you've got like, this thing. It's like, called Google, man. Math (to most people) is not fun. Spending money is fun. And honestly, other lessons can stick, like how fast you can lose 10,000 dollars. I've already given at least one example of history, but there are other things you can do. I'm explaining to fifth graders "why do some countries go to war." Here's the project, divide your class into groups of four, five, or how many can give each group at least four people. Each of them are going to start their own country. However, each of them has a resource that the others doesn't, resources that everyone needs to get something special for their own country. And most of these countries boarder each other. They can deal with things peacefully, or they can go to war. Just make sure that this exercise doesn't get too out of hand. Yes, this does sound like a Real-Time strategy game. If kids can learn from classic books or movies, they can learn from classic music or video games. Science has this easy, like I said, because they already do experiments. The good teachers anyway. And I don't mean just dissecting frogs. I mean, wiring a battery to a light bulb until it correctly illuminates. Science has the easiest time sparking a child's imagination, which is the easiest way to get engagement. Another easy way to get engagement is admit that everything we know about science is the best that we currently know now. That doesn't mean you're wrong, and if your student asks you wrong, ask them to prove it. Like I said, English has this the hardest. The closest thing people currently attempt it watching movies based on the book. That's fine and good, although it isn't always an option. There's one universally good question that can get a student interested. It's not, "what happened on page 57?" Ask, "what you would do if you were in the main character's position?" Ask them this enough, it not only makes them like reading more, it helps their reading comprehension. Just don't get angry or surprised or anything if the student thinks the main character is an idiot. Just because you assigned the book does not mean that they can't have a legitimate negative opinion. But that's just fiction, what about non-fiction? Well, that's even easier. Every child has an interest and literally every interest has some piece of media tailored to it. You want kids' test scores to rise? You need to make them engaged in school. And no, that's not the parents' job. That's the teacher's job. The parents don't give the material. I understand that with things like Common Core and standardized tests, this becomes harder and harder to do. I'm not saying that you have to be perfect, and with all of the chips and cards currently on the table it's kind of impossible. But the impossible is sometimes what you need to aim for, whether its the Wright Brothers getting people to fly or Peter Jackson filming the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Oh wait, neither of those inspiring stories are on the standardized tests? Sorry. Maybe I'll make a few more of these, you know, if anyone cares about my opinions on the matter. I know that some students might, but students don't change how education works.